Some Protestants, such as Born-Again Christians, believe that one can be saved in heaven—assured salvation. Did early Mormons believe in something similar? Was polygamy a ticket to heaven, not just for the man, but for his wives and children as well? Dr. Bill Smith will talk about this in our next conversation.

Bill: The idea is that the elite Mormon men, those with—maybe I should use the word assured salvation, like Joseph Smith, it was a great thing to be a child of somebody like that theoretically. It was a great thing to be their child because as Joseph says, “On the other side of the veil, I will claim what I seal.” In other words, anybody he is sealed to is guaranteed to go into heaven with him. Because he is guaranteed in the revelation in fact that he’ll be going to heaven. So, this is important. It’s an important story for important people.

That sounds doubly bad I guess in the present day. It sounds sexist. It sounds elitist, but in fact that’s the way it worked out. A lot of people engaged in polygamy, a lot of women engaged in polygamy, not as many men of course, but it was really a story in terms of descendants, a story of elite Mormon men, because they are the ones that had 30 wives, or 15 wives, or 25 wives, or more. Most of those men had children with most of those wives.

Dr. Smith talks about how the theology of assured salvation has changed over the years. We will also talk about one of the major justifications of polygamy: raising seed. If that was so important, why didn’t Joseph have children with wives other than Emma?

Bill: I can’t really answer that except to say that the record on the ground seems to suggest that at least with some women, other than his wife, he was having sex. But I think it is impossible to argue beyond reminiscent accounts and that sort of thing, whether or not that was really going on. I think it’s probably a sure thing that it did happen, but with who and how often? That’s really hard to say.

Oliver Cowdery has been accused of practicing polygamy before he was authorized to do so. In our next conversation with Dr. Bill Smith we’ll address these rumors. Are they true?

Bill: That I think is wrong. I think it developed out of a story that happened because before Oliver left on his Lamanite mission to the borders of the Lamanites in Missouri, he was with Parley Pratt and a couple of other guys going to be missionaries out there to the Lamanites. They get commissioned by revelation to do this.

Before he leaves, he has asked Elizabeth Whitmer to marry him, so he is engaged to her. On the way through Ohio he meets another woman there, falls madly in love with her, asks her to marry him. That’s the extent of any Cowdery polygamy. That was a pretty big issue for a number of early Mormons. Some of his mission companions talk about this later. That was a big issue. He has a high council session about this thing. He repents. “I’m really going to marry Elizabeth.” This other woman was just a flight of fancy or something. But that’s the extent of it.

We will talk about Oliver’s accusation of Joseph’s dirty, nasty, filthy affair with Fanny Alger.

Bill: There is no evidence as far as I know of that. I think that Oliver and some other people were aware of the Alger affair…

Don’t forget to listen to our conversation about Emma! Check out our conversation…..

According to the Bible, King David and Solomon had hundreds of wives and concubines, yet the Book of Mormons condemns this practice. How does this square with the polygamy revelation in Doctrine & Covenants 132? Dr. Bill Smith will answer questions about Biblical polygamy in just a moment.

Bill: Let me preface this by revealing to you something about how I think about scripture. My personal point of view is really colored by what I’ve read or studied or worked through in terms of scholarship of the Bible. I tend to trade on that in how I think about Mormon scripture. The main point is this: I think it’s a mistake to try to really seek for a continuity of narrative between how people did this 3,000 years ago, or how people thought about this 1,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago, or what the New Testament says about this or that.

I think that Joseph Smith saw a continuity. He makes the Old Testament elites, he turns them all into Christians, which I think is utterly interesting, remarkable and strange. There is a kind of hermeneutic that is kind of a conservative Protestant one that sort of fits in I think to how we, at least in the 20th century in the LDS Tradition have thought about scripture as being one continuous revelation. It’s all really got to be reconciled as one thing. I think that’s a mistake and not really justifiable historically.

We will also discuss how biblically literate Mormons are.

Bill: One general authority wrote to the First Presidency about his experiences with missionaries, after he had toured some missions on the east coast and said, “We have got great missionaries with testimonies, but they just don’t know anything about religion. It makes it very hard for them to interface with people who do, or who have experience in their own religions. They need to know how to deal with such people, or at least have a knowledgebase from which to go.” I think that’s kind of a controversial statement, but it is interesting that he thought we didn’t, or the missionaries didn’t have that.

GT: Yes, to me that’s not very surprising, although I would say I guess in defense of Mormons, I do think that we have a better understanding of the Bible than a lot of Protestants do.

Bill: I think that’s absolutely true, especially post-missionary people. You know you have to deal in the Bible because most of our missionaries go to Christian peoples, people who know about the New Testament, and at least through their churches or their ministers or preachers that they have heard. They know passages of the New Testament. They may have even been schooled in how to deal with Mormons. All of that is biblical.

What do think? Are LDS better or worse than Protestants or Catholics with regards to biblical literacy? Who needs more improvement?